In The News: IATA releases its yearbook of the airline’s industry’s performances; Booking.com launches the first Technology Playmaker Awards; ATPCO and SITA announces the NDC Exchange
IATA STATISTICS: Asia Pacific dominates air travel with 35% of the world market
Asia Pacific airlines dominated the sky last year (Image credit: lena_serditova/iStock)
Asia Pacific, once again, retained its position as the dominant region for air travel, commanding 35%of the world market. Its airline carried the largest number of passenger in 2016 – 1.3 billion passengers, representing an 11.3% increase on 2015.
Globally, airlines carried 3.8 billion passengers last year, a rise of 7% over 2015 – an additional 242 million air trips, according to the 2017 edition of the IATA World Air Transport Statistics (WATS), the yearbook of the airline industry’s performance.
The report also revealed that the top five international/regional passenger and domestic airport-pairs were all in the APAC region. However, the US trumped over APAC in the airline category with the top three positions taken by American carriers.
Here are the highlights of 2016 airline industry performance:
Passenger share
- Asia Pacific 35% market share (1.3 billion, an increase of 11.3% compared to 2015)
- Europe 26% market share (992.4 million, up 6.1% over 2015)
- North America 24% market share (911.5 million, up 3% over 2015)
- Latin America 7% market share (275.1 million, up 1.8% from 2015)
- Middle East 5% market share (206.1 million, an increase of 9.1% over 2015)
- Africa 2% market share (84 million, up 6% over 2015)
Top five airlines (domestic and international, ranked by total passengers carried )
- Southwest Airlines (151.8 million)
- American Airlines (144.2 million)
- Delta Air Lines (143.3 million)
- China Southern Airlines (114.5 million)
- Ryanair (112 million)
Top five international/regional airport pairs
- Hong Kong-Taipei (5.2 million, up 2.1% from 2015)
- Jakarta-Singapore (3.4 million, up 0.9% from 2015)
- Bangkok Suvarnabhumi-Hong Kong (3 million, a decrease of 3.14% from 2015)
- Kuala Lumpur–Singapore (2.8 million, up 3.3% from 2015)
- Hong Kong-Seoul (2.8 million, down 15% from 2015)
Top five domestic airport-pairs
- Jeju-Seoul Gimpo (11.6 million, up 4.6% over 2015)
- Sapporo-Tokyo Haneda (7.7 million, down 1.2% from 2015)
- Fukuoka-Tokyo Haneda (7.3 million, a decrease of 4% from 2015)
- Melbourne-Tullamarine-Sydney (7.3 million, down 4.6% from 2015)
- Hanoi-Ho Chi Minh City (6.4 million, up 16.2% from 2015)
Passenger traffic by nationality
- US citizens are the world’s most prevalent travellers. Some 810 million passengers travelled on US passports in 2016 comprising 21% of all passengers worldwide.
- Internationally, American citizens also took top place, comprising 9.5% of all travellers. This was followed by citizens of the UK (7.8%), Germany (6.5%), China (6.4%) and France (4.1%).
New Model Airlines (NMAs), includes Low Cost Carriers (LCCs)
- LCCs accounted for 28.3% of all passengers in 2016, up from 27.1% of passengers in 2015.
- Network carriers account for 69.5% of total passengers while leisure carriers contributed 2.2% to passenger volumes.
Airline alliances
Star Alliance maintained its position as the largest airline alliance in 2016 with 38% of total scheduled traffic (in revenue passenger kilometres RPK), followed by SkyTeam (33%) and oneworld (29%)
TECHNOLOGY: New awards to recognise achievements of women in technology
Awards recognise women in technology
Booking.com has launched the first Technology Playmaker Awards, which “aim to celebrate and recognise women who have disrupted, and continue to transform businesses, industries, and communities through the use of technology.”
The inaugural awards will focus on Europe to recognise and support the European technology scene, including those women driving innovation.
According to Booking.com, the awards creator, this is because women are underrepresented in the technology sector worldwide, with European tech start-ups led by women are particularly affected.
Data from the European Commission reveals that only 14.7% of European tech unicorns are founded by women compared to 17% in the US.
“Today’s world is increasingly driven by technology innovation. Now more than ever we need positive female role models and an industry culture that celebrates female tech talent,” said Gillian Tans, Booking.com CEO and chairman of the awards judging panel
“We hope that the Technology Playmaker Awards will become a source of inspiration for future generations of women embracing opportunities in the technology world”,
The awards include 10 categories including entrepreneurship, innovation, community impact, and technology leadership. Each category winner will receive a monetary prize of €5,000 to help them advance their business and professional goals, with the overall grand prix winner collecting €10,000.
The overall grand prix award will be awarded to the female technology leader whom the judges consider to be the most impactful individual in the European technology space.
The awards ceremony is on March 8, 2018 at the Sackler Hall of the Museum of London where Randi Zuckerberg, founder & CEO at Zuckerberg Media and former director of market development for Facebook, will give the keynote address.
Entries are now open at www.techplaymakerawards.com
AVIATION: Airline NDC gets boost from ATPCO and SITA
ATPCO and SITA solution supports the adoption of IATA’s NDC (Image credit: SITA)
Airline Tariff Publising House (ATPCO) and SITA have jointly developed NDC Exchange, an industry-owned platform to support the adoption of IATA’s New Distribution Capability (NDC) for airfares and ancillary sales.
ATPCO, which serves as the airline fare and merchandising content data provider for more than 400 airlines worldwide, said the solution enables quick adoption of NDC, lowers the cost of compliance to the scheme while supporting complex interlining as airlines migrate to the new distribution format.
“NDC is designed to enable the travel industry to transform the way air products are retailed to corporations, leisure and business travellers. NDC Exchange will provide simple, cost-effective API connectivity for airlines and their partners to facilitate data exchange,” it added in a statement.
Additionally, NDC Exchange will facilitate the real-time exchange of pricing, shopping and ancillary messages between airlines, travel agents and aggregators. It will normalise messages that use various versions of the NDC schemes, as well as translate messages that are based on non-NDC schemas such as the Open Travel Alliance (OTA) XML schemes.
The service has already been successfully piloted by several major international airlines including Air Canada and British Airways.
Rolf Purzer, president & CEO of ATPCO, said its partnership with SITA in developing the solution “enhances the complex distribution landscape, giving everyone a clear path to incorporate all methods of distribution.”
Ilya Gutlin, SITA president if Air Transport Solutions added that while the NDC offers exciting new opportunities in the marketplace, it also presents new business and technical challenges for airlines.
“SITA is teaming with ATPCO to provide an air transport community solution that will facilitate NDC adoption by reducing the complexity for airlines to establish and maintain direct connections with travel agencies and travel management companies.”
ATPCO and SITA are certified IATA NDC Capable IT providers, and the NDC Exchange has been given the Level 3 NDC certification. This is the highest level of certification offered by IATA and covers the full spectrum of order management and shopping.
• Featured image credit: 06photo/iStock
